Full Spectrum

In a society at any one time, if there is x quantity of individuals who show their lack of sense of society by developing an antisocial tendency, there is z quantity of individuals reacting to inner insecurity by the alternate tendency - identification with authority.

This is unhealthy, immature, because it is not an identification with authority that arises out of self-discovery.

It is a sense of frame without sense of picture, a sense of form without retention of spontaneity.

This is a prosociety tendency that is anti-individual. People who develop in this way can be called 'hidden antisocials'.

Hidden antisocials are not 'whole persons' any more than are manifest antisocials, since each needs to find and to control the conflicting force in the external world outside the self.

By contrast, the healthy person, who is capable of becoming depressed, is able to find the whole conflict within the self as well as being able to see the whole conflict outside the self, in external (shared) reality.

When healthy persons come together, they each contribute a whole world, because each brings a whole person.

Hidden antisocials provide material for a type of leadership which is sociologically immature [...] Once in such positions, these immature leaders immediately gather to themselves the obvious antisocials, who welcome them as their natural masters (false resolution of splitting).

The election of a person implies that the electors believe in themselves as persons, and therefore believe in the person they nominate or vote for.

As a whole (healthy) person he has the total conflict within, which enables him to get a view, albeit a personal one, of total external situation.

The election of a party or a group tendency is relatively less mature. It does not require of the electors a trust in a human being.

For immature persons, nevertheless, it is the only logical procedure, precisely because an immature person cannot conceive of, or believe in, a truly mature individual.

[D.W. Winnicott]Home Is Where We Start From ('The Meaning of the Word 'Democracy''), p.243-4, 249